My Strong Scotch
by aroseofmanyleaves
Summary: Drabble. Doctor Cox's insight on what happened at the end of 'My Lunch' after losing three patients and having a breakdown. Rated for language.


'Clear!'

'Clear!'

Clear!' I yelled for the final time, my brow creasing with a kind of ferocious fear and anxiety, placing the pads on his bare chest and jumping slightly at the electric current charged through his body, attempting to restart his heart.

And then, he flat lined.

This could not be happening. This could NOT be happening. I roared out in anger and pulled the machine right off the table and slammed the crap down on the ground so that it smashed into a million pieces. Carla looked at me, that stu-huu-pid motherly expression on her pretty Latina face,

'There was nothing you could…' Carla began in a calm tone as the nurses evacuated the room, taking out the remaining equipment, eyebrows raised at my 'erratic behaviour'.

'Leave. Now.' I growled before she could finish her sentence. She walked over to me, looking sadly at the dead man's body on the bed. She tried to put a reassuring arm around me, but I shrugged her off violently and put my hands behind my head. I sighed out in exasperation. Pain was slowly overtaking my senses.

Carla left, but before she shut the door to the hell hole that I was trapped within, she turned and looked at me and said,

'Don't be too hard on yourself Perry.'

A few minutes later, some nurses dressed in pink and purple scrubs came and wheeled Mr Bradford out to the morgue. They were quick, trying to avoid any outbursts from me probably.

And after that, I just stood with my hands behind my head like I did when I was angry. Three patients. I had lost three fucking patients. As soon as the autopsy results had come back for the donor, I knew we were in trouble. Rabies. Come one, how many people got rabies, died, and passed it onto three people? Shit. Shit. This was totally shit. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself, but now, I wasn't angry or sad anymore, I was enraged. I yelled out again in hoarse tones and kicked the side of the bed – hard. Pain shot through my foot and up my leg, but it was worth it, I deserved it. I wanted to break things; I wanted to smash things into pieces like what had happened to me.

Sometimes I wonder what idiotic notion persuaded me that I wanted to become a doctor. I must've been off my head when I made that stupid decision. I mean, I should be used to it by now, people flat lining and dying. But come ON. Three patients, in half an hour. Gawd, the Big Man really had it in for me.

'WHAT THE HELL HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?' I roared deafeningly. But there was no one around to hear my cries. This was the donor's ward, where people waited for their 'life-saving' organs. Fuck. I yelled into the silence until a figure appeared in the bleakness of the hall.

It was Newbie.

Newbie walked up to the door, pushed down the handle gently and cautiously entered. I glared intently at him, and his eyes were brimmed with fear. I hadn't noticed that mine were brimmed with tears. Funny, I thought, me, crying. It was pathetic.

Before Newbie could open his mouth to say fuck-all words of encouragement, I said,

'He wasn't dying. He could've waited another month for a kidney.'

Newbie looked confused and scared; he had never seen me like this before. No-one had. Yeah, he had seen me angry and sarcastic but never like this, never, never…distressed.

I stormed past him, smacking into his shoulder as I walked towards the end of corridor door.

'Where are you going?' Sheila asked curiously.

I turned around, smiled sarcastically and turned to leave again.

'You can't leave, your shift hasn't finished yet,' Brenda piped up. He took a step towards me and continued,

'Remember what you told me, once you start blaming yourself for patient's deaths, there's no coming back.'

I grinned, but not from pleasure and replied,

'Yeah, I know.' And with that, I pushed open the door with all my strength, almost flinging it off its hinges. I left Newbie standing there, alone, in a stone cold silence.

My nerve was broken. I had nothing to say, nothing that mattered, nothing that mattered anymore. I pushed past Jordan when she opened the apartment door with a smile, balancing Jack on her hip, and strode over to my drinks cabinet. There, I grabbed a large bottle of my strongest scotch, took a glass, sat on the leather couch and poured myself a generous helping of heaven.

The scotch burned my throat as it slid down, but I kept drinking and drinking and drinking until I heard my little boy say,

'Daddy drinks a lot.'

I almost stopped right there, but I couldn't. I stared at Jordan, who lips were moving but it was like she was on mute.

I poured myself another glass, and then another. After a while, all I could do was pour and drink, pour and drink, pour and drink. My eyes glazed over and my senses froze. I knew that drinking this much was bad, but something in the back of my head craved desperately for it. So I satisfied that craving until I could not remember, for the life of me, what I was so depressed about.


End file.
